During his confirmation process, I challenged Director John Berry to lead by example and make the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) an employer of choice among Federal agencies.

I think the more you can work with the unions, the better off I think all of us are going to be.

The wages we pay our Federal employees are not subject to collective bargaining. We set that by the statute and that is what it is.

Some of the complaints that we had is it takes a lot of time to do performance evaluation.

I would like to have a written document from you and from John Berry about how you are going to handle this situation.

We went from a cap of $40,000 to $60,000 and from $6,000 a year to $10,000 a year.

In their evaluation, do you look at whether or not they are paying attention to the issue of diversity in terms of their hiring practices?

I always feel good about this because Senator Akaka and I were able to get GAO flexibilities.

One of the things that you need is a set of tools to attract people to come to the Federal Government.

Doesn't designating an internship program as a diversity tool provide a vehicle for some of that to take place?

Is there any recruiting going on that you know of where diversity is the target?

It seems to me that what you want to do is to get the people that run the IRS and others to come in and talk about it.